Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 1026 Private (Pte) Charles Edward Forster, 22nd Battalion. A farm labourer, from Wedderburn, Vic prior to enlistment, Pte Forster embarked with B Company from Melbourne on HMAT Ulysses on 10 May 1915. After initially declared as wounded and missing in action, a later Court of Inquiry determined that he had been killed in action on 3 May 1917 at Bullecourt, France. He is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had the concession to take photographs at the Broadmeadows and Seymour army camps during the First World War. In the 1930s, the Australian War Memorial purchased the original glass negatives from Algernon Darge, along with the photographers' notebooks. The notebooks contain brief details, usually a surname or unit name, for each negative.